Motor vehicles having a rear door formed into a slidable construction are known and widely used heretofore. In the manufacture of such vehicles equipped with slide doors, a slide door and a vehicle body are initially produced separately and they are brought together in a painting process for securing color matching therebetween. In the painting process, various jigs are used so that the slide door can be temporarily set to a desired position relative to the vehicle body.
One example of such slide door temporary setting jigs is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication (JP-A) No. 2001-205150. The disclosed jig, as shown here in FIGS. 6 and 7, includes a bar-like first attachment portion 102 having one end adapted to be removably connected to a vehicle body 101, a first bracket 103 pivotally connected at a central portion thereof to the other end of the first attachment portion 102, a first link arm 104 pivotally connected at one end thereof to one end of the first bracket 103, a second link arm 105 pivotally connected at one end thereof to the other end of the first bracket 103, a second bracket 106 to which other ends of the first and second link arms 104 and 105 are pivotally connected, and a second attachment portion 107 firmly connected to an end of the second bracket 106 and adapted to be removably connected to a slide door 108. The first bracket 103, the first link arm 104, the second link arm 105 and the second bracket 106 jointly form a quadrilateral linkage.
During the painting process, the slide door 108 is held in a closed position shown in FIG. 6, in which a front end of the slide door 108 is slightly displaced or offset in a lateral outward direction from a side surface of the vehicle body 101 so that a liquid paint used in the painting process can be easily removed from the interior side of the vehicle body through an opening defined between the front end of the slide door 108 and an adjacent edge of the vehicle body 101.
To enable a human operator to perform a vehicle interior work, the slide door 108 is moved in a rightward direction of FIG. 6 whereupon by virtue of displacement of the quadrilateral linkage, the slide door pivotally moves from the closed position of FIG. 6 to a fully opened position of FIG. 7, in which the slide door 108 opens at substantially right angles to the side surface of the vehicle body 101. In this position, an opening-motion limit pin 109 provided on the second link arm 105 in confronting relation to the first link arm 104 is brought into contact with the first link arm 104 so that further movement of the first link arm 104 in a rightward direction in FIG. 7 does not take place. Furthermore, a closing-motion limit pin 112 is inserted in a retainer hole 111 formed in the second link arm 105 so that the first link arm 104 is prevented from moving in a leftward direction in FIG. 7. Thus, the slide door 108 is locked in the fully opened position of FIG. 7.
The conventional jig 100 of the foregoing construction is, however, not fully satisfactory in that due to the necessity of removable insertion of the closing-motion limit pin 112 into the retainer hole 111, the jig 100 renders the slide door setting operation tedious and time-consuming. Furthermore, since the closing-motion limit pin 112 is produced as a separate part structurally independent from a body of the jig 100, there is a certain risk of missing the pin 112. Moreover, the jig 100 has no means of holding the slide door in any desired open position located between the closed position of FIG. 6 and the fully opened position of FIG. 7.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a vehicle slide door temporary setting jig which is easy to handle, can perform a slide door temporary setting operation efficiently in a relatively short period of time, and is capable of holding a slide door in a given angular position relative to the vehicle body.